James R. Mirick sets the record straight on things he cares about

Ages of the Internet, Part 1

I feel compelled to make some observations about the future of the Internet. This future is inexorably tied up in its past, so here's a brief overview that focuses on the practical user experience, rather than on the technology. This will ultimately help us see where the phenomenon of the Internet is taking us.

1. Age of Email and Bulletin Boards. Starting about 1984, closed networks such as Compuserve and AOL began offering email among their members, and hosting user-posted diiscussion bulletin boards. Compuserve at one point had several thousand bulletin boards, and other stand-alone servers that could be dialed into hosted more. Gradually, and somewhat unwillingly, these closed systems began to transfer emails from one host to another, but focused on having private content available only to their members as a way to justify their membership fees. Around 1987 most of these services offered "Internet access" ports, sometimes for an added fee.

2. Age of the Static Web. Until the early '90s, the only way to actually move data around was by using FTP, the File Transfer Protocol. You found a file, guessed if it might contain something you wanted, downloaded it, opened it, and saw if it did. Then in 1991 Sir Timothy Berners-Lee invented the Web and its protocols, and in 1992 Marc Andreessen and others brought out Mosaic, a graphically-oriented browser. We can now access files that "show themselves" in a window, and by using embedded links, access other pages. Lots of "stuff" is available on the Internet, but its all "look and see" static display pages.

3. The transaction Web. Then in 1996 some governance changes allowed the "legal" use of the Internet for commercial purposes, and companies lost no time in exploiting this. Not only could users / customers see information about a company or a product, they could buy it and have it shipped to them. Some of the earliest users were banks, travel companies, and software vendors, whose products didn't need to be shipped, but very shortly physical products were orderable on the Internet. I brought out US Bank's first corporate website in 1995 and the first transaction-enabled site in 1997. By 1999 everybody needed a web-based e-commerce capability, which caused excessive investment in "anything Internet" which then lead to a spectacular collapse starting in 2000.

Over the next several years there was little change in capability but huge changes in access: the Internet becomes ubiquitous. Vast numbers of people around the world became connected, and merchants and others figured out how to design user-friendly websites that were aimed at the practical needs of actual people doing their work. The Internet, via the Web, becomes a utility service, like water or electricity. Search engines like Google and Yahoo help people find what they are looking for, quickly and relatively non-technically. Oddly enough, email remains the "killer app" and the most-used Internet service.

4. The Engaged Internet. Starting in late 2005 the combination of pervasive broadband connectivity and some interesting new system development toolsets started to facilitate new and powerfully engaging services that ride on the Internet rails. Some are delivered via the web (often with embedded browsers that you don't see as browsers at all) and others as "widgets" that live as icons on the user's desktop. There are now multi-user games that allow players to create avatars representing themselves and play with sometimes hundreds of other users around the world. Like to instant-message your friends? Cross-system IM clients such as Gaim in essence repeat the experience of 10 years ago when e-mails were allowed to jump from network to network. Cell phones can access websites, but who really wants to see a website on a cell phone? However, they can take pictures which are then posted directly to Internet-based picture repositories such as Flickr where your friends can see them in near-real-time.

OK, the point: this progression is not a linear expansion of some set of capabilities into the future. In fact, each jump I have identified is in fact a considerable discontinuity with respect to the one before it. The web is NOT just an extension of the facilities that Compuserve, AOL, and The Well offered, its completely different and not just because of the invention of the browser. The Transaction Web uses the same browser, but the services that the sites are providing are qualitatively different. So in a period of less than 20 years we have at least 4 completely discontinuous jumps in practical usage of Internet-based services that were not really predictable based on history.

In my next post on this subject, I will take the exceedingly rash step of assessing where all this is leading.